Definition
Consignation is the formal act by which a debtor deposits money or another owed thing with a third party — or under court authority — when the creditor refuses to accept payment. The deposit discharges or suspends the debtor's obligation in the same way tender and acceptance would have done.
The term carries two related but distinct applications depending on the legal tradition:
1. Scotch law: The payment of money into the hands of a third party (the consignatory) when the creditor refuses to receive it. The deposit stands in place of direct payment and relieves the debtor of the consequences of non-payment, including accruing interest or liability for breach.
2. French civil law: A judicially supervised deposit made by a debtor of the thing owed, carried out under the authority of a court of justice. This is a more formal proceeding than the Scotch usage and is not, strictly speaking, mere payment — it is a structured legal act that extinguishes the debt once the court authorizes the deposit.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act of consigning; also, the act of ratifying or confirming; a stamp or indication.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of delivering or committing to another person, place, or state; also, confirmation or ratification, as if by signing; a sign or stamp. Webster's illustrates the word primarily through theological writing (Jeremy Taylor), where it carried the sense of sealing one's fate or confirming a spiritual condition.
The common and legal meanings share a surface connection — both involve committing something to another's hands — but diverge sharply in legal effect. In law, consignation is not merely delivery; it is a procedurally specific act with debt-discharge consequences. A researcher encountering the word in a non-legal historical text should not assume any formal legal meaning is intended.
Common Confusion
Consignation is easily confused with consignment, which is the delivery of goods to a merchant or agent for sale on the owner's behalf. The two words share the same Latin root (consignare, to seal or entrust) and appear in overlapping commercial contexts, but they describe fundamentally different transactions. Consignment creates a bailment for purposes of sale; consignation discharges or suspends a debt by depositing the owed sum or thing with a neutral party. Confusing them in historical commercial records can badly misread the legal posture of the parties.
Consignation is also related to, but not identical with, tender. Tender is the offer of payment; consignation is what follows when that offer is refused — the formal deposit that preserves the debtor's legal position.
Why It Matters in Research
Consignation is a term of civil law heritage — Scotch and French legal systems — and appears in American sources primarily in Louisiana materials, early conflicts-of-law discussions, and treatises on obligation drawn from civilian sources. Researchers working in common law jurisdictions will rarely encounter the term in domestic case law, but may find it in treatises (Pothier on Obligations is the anchor citation in the historical dictionaries) and in courts applying civil law principles.
The key research trap is assuming consignation and tender are equivalent concepts. Common law tender doctrine and civil law consignation produce similar practical outcomes (preserving the debtor, stopping interest) but through different procedural mechanisms. Historical sources — particularly 18th and 19th century American courts interpreting French or Spanish land grants, or Louisiana civil code materials — may use consignation where a common law court would say tender and payment into court.
The reference in Black's 2nd Ed. to Weld v. Hadley, 1 N.H. 304 is one of the few early American common law appearances. Researchers tracing the concept into American jurisprudence should treat New Hampshire and Louisiana as the primary domestic sources, with Louisiana materials being the richer vein.
Watch also for the term consignatory — the third party who receives the deposit — which appears in Scotch-law sources and Bell's Dictionary. This agent-like figure has no direct common law equivalent and should not be read as a consignee in the commercial sense.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd Ed.), Bouvier's, and Burrill's — are in substantial agreement on the core definition, borrowing language nearly verbatim from each other and from Bell's Scottish law dictionary. This uniformity signals a term of settled civilian meaning transplanted into American legal dictionaries largely without modification or domestic development.
Burrill adds the Latin root (consignare, to seal up) and flags that in French law consignation is not properly a payment in the ordinary sense — a distinction the other dictionaries elide. This is a meaningful doctrinal nuance: the French tradition treats the judicially supervised deposit as a legal act sui generis, not merely a substitute tender.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is any discussion of consignation's treatment in American equity courts, its interaction with the common law doctrine of payment into court, or its survival in Louisiana civil code procedure. They present the term as a foreign law curiosity rather than a living doctrine — which reflects how limited its footprint was in 19th-century American common law practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Consignation as a formal legal doctrine is primarily operative in civil law jurisdictions. In the United States, Louisiana is the natural home for the concept, where it appears in the Civil Code provisions on tender and deposit. Common law states achieve similar results through tender doctrine combined with payment into court under procedural rules, but do not use the term consignation as a term of art.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Tender and Payment; Civil Law Obligations; Payment Into Court